Profile for BGrace
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | BGrace |
| Member number | 5153 |
| Title | Apprentice |
| Postcount | 5 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |
Recent posts
| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| DWTD - stuck in Blades of Avernum | |
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Apprentice
Member # 5153
|
written Sunday, November 7 2004 15:36
Profile
If there were some tremendous shift in the space/time continuum so that I actually wanted to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours working on a project that will give me no money whatsoever, and I did decide to make a BofA scenario, it would probably be completly new rather than a retelling of Erika's Legacy. Don't hold your breath. ;) I would do it, for example, if I were in jail but had a laptop. Posts: 5 | Registered: Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |
| DWTD - stuck in Blades of Avernum | |
|
Apprentice
Member # 5153
|
written Sunday, November 7 2004 14:37
Profile
I understand. Erika's Legacy made me quit Exile too. I never wanted to see any of it again after the trouble it was to write the scenario. I only played one other player's very brief scenario, and only because he was a friend of mine. I think if you do go back you'll find there are only two other difficult places in the game. One of them I put in because the beta testers said my game was "too nice." If you decide to play it again, bear in mind that I may not be able to help you if you get stuck because I don't remember. There is a hint file, though. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to port it over to BofA. Is that possible? Posts: 5 | Registered: Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |
| DWTD - stuck in Blades of Avernum | |
|
Apprentice
Member # 5153
|
written Sunday, November 7 2004 13:00
Profile
First, I'm unstuck now. I actually stooped so low as to go into the character editor and edit money, then buy the one invulnerability potion I could find, which was the thing that did the trick getting past the vampire the 2nd time. I never use the character editor or hint books, because when I win I don't feel like I won anything. Asking a specific question on a board is as far as I go ... until today. Oh, and I don't buy hint books and maps. Regarding EM, if that's a good one I thank you for the advice and will download it. Regarding satire in Erika's Legacy, maybe satire isn't the exact word but I did mean it to be humorous. I had played all the Exile games before I began to write it and I had a lot of pent-up things I wanted to have fun with. I haven't looked at it for seven years but just off the top of my head: turning Vahnahtai Land into a cheesy tourist attraction with snow globes and stuff in the gift shop, the ultra mysterious X that nobody even sees being actually quite well known to someone (ahem), the gift shop where you could buy outrageously powerful wands, etc., if you had more money than anyone could possibly ever get, one of the shops in town being a snooty beauty salon, the huge food warehouse where the annoying gremlins were storing all that food they'd stolen from me througout the previous games, the town full of people who had gone insane from all the violence (these were all members of the tiny Blades community and my beta testers), Jeff Vogel wandering around all confused because it looked so familiar but he didn't know what was going to happen next, etc. I truly don't mind about the few negative reviews, but it was apparent some people just have no sense of humor. This was really a hilarious episode in my life, doing that scenario, and the aftermath when it was all being taken so seriously. The whole concept was new, in fact I wrote that as a beta tester for Blades of Exile. I didn't think anybody else would ever play it. Then when there were all these boards springing up and people nitpicking every little thing to death and getting into huge fights over what is more fun, puzzles or combat, and arguing over what the real history of Exile was and who knew more than anybody, killing each other over what scenario was great vs. terrible, etc... Writing that game was hard, first because a whole bunch of the features didn't work right (do they now? or did he just give up and write B of A?), and second because the whole issue of game balance was mysterious and hard to predict. I'd be sitting there looking at a little box where I was supposed to assign a damage number to a weapon, for example, and I had absolutely no idea what number to put in. There wasn't any help online. The only person who could help was Jeff and he was busy trying to get the game ready for sale. The best part of the whole thing was that I got major cool points from my son's friends. Nobody else's mom wrote an RPG scenario. It really only got famous because it was one of the first 20 written and it did actually have a plot and some fun challenges which most of the rest didn't. Mostly there were a lot of people on message boards going on and on about how the scenario they were writing was going to be so incredibly much better than anything anybody else had released, and not too many of them followed through. I don't blame them for not following through, it was a really hard thing to do, especially for someone like me with no programming knowledge whatsover. For example, I didn't have the slightest idea how to make a custom graphic and there was virtually no help online at that time. I still get an email every now and then from someone wanting help with it. I'm not much help. I haven't looked at it for seven years. The thing that has been funniest of all is that I designed a dungeon where the monsters are invincible, and it really made people mad. They seemed to think I was treating people really badly for having done that. But all you had to do was headbang around to the secret passage that bypassed the monsters. I mean, come on, when in doubt, headbang, right? Posts: 5 | Registered: Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |
| DWTD - stuck in Blades of Avernum | |
|
Apprentice
Member # 5153
|
written Sunday, November 7 2004 09:49
Profile
Yes, I do haste and bless but I don't have enough invulnerability potions, not sure where to find them in this scenario. I don't know what EM is, I assume it's a well done user scenario? I've been away from SpiderWeb games for um, seven years now? Let me know, I'd be happy to play a different scenario. I wanted to get through the Run in time fair and square, so I didn't do any of the side missions. I kept thinking what a bizarro plot it had that Jeff wrote all these neat dungeons and put all this cool stuff in there, I mean how long did it take to write all that, and you didn't have time to explore any of it and still win the game. Go back after ... ? Wish I'd thought of that. I don't know whether to tell you if I wrote Erika's Legacy. If you agree that you'd rather stick your face in broken glass than play it, then no, that wasn't me. If you were someone who actually GOT THE FACT THAT IT WAS A SATIRE and thought it was funny, then yeah. Posts: 5 | Registered: Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |
| DWTD - stuck in Blades of Avernum | |
|
Apprentice
Member # 5153
|
written Saturday, November 6 2004 08:41
Profile
I've done everything in DWTD except kill the Goblin Chief and kill Vahkos the second time. In both these cases at least one of my party is killed before I get any moves. That's not fun. My party is about level 30. I don't have many of the interesting items you can find in ZKR (I didn't know you could go back and get them after you make the deadline). There isn't anything else to do to get more training points at this time. Any suggestions for me? Any trick to let me get a turn before they simply kill me? Posts: 5 | Registered: Monday, November 1 2004 08:00 |